I think there’s an alternative explanation for why social pressure may be used to make the dissenter capitulate. This is when an uninformed non-expert is dissenting from the informed judgments of an expert on their core subject.
This is done for a few reasons. One is to use mild humiliation to motivate the non-expert to get past their pretentions and ego, do their research, and become more useful. Another is when it would be a bad use of time and resources to educate the non-expert on the spot. A third is when the non-expert is pointing out a real but surmountable challenge to the strategy, which is best dealt with at a later time. And a fourth is when the root of the issue is a values mismatch that is being framed as a disagreement about facts.
This maybe is why I’m more inclined to view this as “leadership language” than as “narrative syncing.” Narrative syncing implies that such actions are undertaken mainly for empty propagandistic reasons, to keep the game going. I think that much of the time, the motivations of the people pressuring dissenters to capitulate are as I’m describing here. It’s just that sometimes, the leaders are wrong.
I think there’s an alternative explanation for why social pressure may be used to make the dissenter capitulate. This is when an uninformed non-expert is dissenting from the informed judgments of an expert on their core subject.
This is done for a few reasons. One is to use mild humiliation to motivate the non-expert to get past their pretentions and ego, do their research, and become more useful. Another is when it would be a bad use of time and resources to educate the non-expert on the spot. A third is when the non-expert is pointing out a real but surmountable challenge to the strategy, which is best dealt with at a later time. And a fourth is when the root of the issue is a values mismatch that is being framed as a disagreement about facts.
This maybe is why I’m more inclined to view this as “leadership language” than as “narrative syncing.” Narrative syncing implies that such actions are undertaken mainly for empty propagandistic reasons, to keep the game going. I think that much of the time, the motivations of the people pressuring dissenters to capitulate are as I’m describing here. It’s just that sometimes, the leaders are wrong.